Hudson Torrefied Spruce

In general, I am very pleased. It is without question the best sounding guitar out of the four dreadnaught guitars I own. The set up was by the book and perfect: great job! I did immediately change the strings from the factory supplied Ernie Ball set to D’Addario EXP 16 light gauge strings. The Ernie Ball strings were already showing corrosion and while OK, definitely not my favs. The neck is very balanced and playable though in my collection first prize for playability goes to my Recording King which has a ridiculously playable neck for a dreadnaught acoustic. That said, the Hudson’s neck is far easier to navigate than any Martin I have ever played. As long as I’ve brought up the “M” word, I should say that the overall sound of the instrument does remind me of a new D-28 only not quite as boomy. It has the same sparkly top end but a much better projection of midrange frequencies than any new D-28 I have played. You can hear the overtones too which is great. Kudos all around. My good friend the late Phoebe Snow would have loved this guitar.

I have some minor cosmetic observations to make below. The one thing that I am not crazy about is the tuners. I have the same tuners on my Recording King (except that they are the gold plated version) and I have the same complaint about both sets of tuners. I find them a bit “slippy” and both guitars with those tuners are difficult to tune in a tempered manner and seem to slip out of tune more than they should. I will probably upgrade to 18:1 original Grover gold plated Rotomatics®.

Aesthetic notes:

The body of the guitar is physically lighter than I thought it would be - a good sign I think. I am not crazy about the matte satin finish. It’s a bit “plain Jane” but was probably chosen to benefit the sound of the instrument. There’s just no substitute for a light hand French polished shellac IMHO - but at the price you are selling the Hudson for that’s probably not a possibility. The banding looks a bit synthetic. If I had my choice I’d choose a natural wood banding which can be mass produced. Check out the discontinued Takamini G406-S New Yorker for an example (photo attached below). They could possibly work on the color and finish of the banding to make it look a bit more like aged ivory. Pretty minor complaint I know - but in the service of excellence.

You guys have set out to make a really good sounding playable dreadnaught at an affordable price; and you have done just that so congrats! At some point I’ll make a demo and pass it on - probably two passes of the same piece one with a little reverb and one without.

I recently happened to check out the LoPrinzi guitar site. I owned their top model in 1975 and foolishly sold it.
I was glad to see that they are still being made. What interested me was the options they give buyers on their top models. If you go to their elite series page http://www.augustinoloprinzi.com/elite-series.html you will see what I mean. Perhaps as Orangewood Guitars evolves they will offer some options that buyers can choose from. In any case, I’m quite pleased with the Hudson and will give it excellent reviews on line and in person.

Awesome guitar! Love it!

I took my first chance on Orangewood a few months ago with the Oliver and came away very impressed. Since one can never have too many guitars, when the Almost Perfect sale came up I had to give one of the higher end models a try and picked up a Hudson. Right out of the box the first thing to do was try to find all the imperfections that put this into the "scratch and dent" pile. The only imperfection I could find was that the nut wasn't perfectly centered on the neck (very minor). I could not find any other defects - it certainly is almost perfect. As others have noted, playability and setup out of the box was excellent. On both the Oliver and this Hudson, the fretboard felt very dry to me, but that was easily corrected with a lemon oil treatment. The tone was really good for a dread with it's build materials. I not going to say I was blown away, but it does have a very satisfying, full, balanced tone that you expect from a $1000 guitar. I'd buy it again even at full price.

Just got it today and right out of the box it was playable. I'll take the bridge down a tad and do a slight bend in the truss rod but it is playable right out of the box. Could not believe the build quality. No smears, no drips, no rough fret ends... Just a well made guitar at a reasonable price... and did i mention tone... this thing is a cannon. And their customer service was spot on ... I kept getting emails about delivery and then the last one came at the same time the guitar arrived... thanks for building a guitar that goes into the hands of a good played who could never afford a (Martin, Taylor, Collins etc.)
cheers, miller

This guitar was well worth the money. It sounds and plays awesome !!